Part 10: Sneaky Shooter - Stealthily Adding Nitrous

Say what you will, but horsepower is horsepower, period. Some guys feel it should come solely from compression, camshafts, and carburetion. That's fine and I used to agree with that . . . to an extent. Personally, now I don't care how a car develops horsepower, as long as it does.

With that in mind, the stock engine in the Valiant didn't possess enough of that tire-frying, rear-end blowing, push-you-back-in-the-seat power we were longing for. Before you get all bottles are for babies, man, let me say one thing--grow up. Is it better to get beaten by that punk kid in his Camaro or to have a sneaky shot of giggle juice hidden in the car? I vote for the latter.

Nitrous oxide is one of those things you can see as soon as you open the hood. This has presented problems in the past for the guy who doesn't like to show all his cards when he gets to the game. Let's face it, it's hard to hide a nitrous plate and solenoids underneath a carburetor. You can't pass the plate off as a spacer if there are braided steel lines attached to it.

When we decided to put nitrous on the Valiant, we wanted to conceal it as best we could. This meant no plates. We contacted Holley Performance and ordered their Top Shot system, which Holley markets as its easiest to install N.O.S. kit. From the looks of all the parts and the mounting procedure, we think they're correct. The Top Shot kit is an adjustable unit, capable of horsepower gains ranging from 75 to 150 hp. For engines like the one in the Valiant, this seemed like the perfect fit. We knew right off the bat we would deviate from the instructions . . . just a little. Holley includes a bracket for the nitrous and fuel solenoids that mounts to a carb mounting stud. That was fine, but we wanted to conceal our nitrous kit completely; this meant hiding the solenoids. So, we actually mounted them to the bottom side of our air-cleaner base. This worked well because we used a recessed base, which gave us the room to mount them, and the recess was low enough that you can't see them. Instead of telling you how we did it, we'll let you take a look for yourself and see how we did it--if you can.

We bet you want to know how it works, don't you? I am smiling, but we'll give you the numbers when we print our story about going to the track. Stay tuned.

Fuelish EndeavorBefore you even consider a nitrous setup, you better have a fuel supply to handle it. Normally, a larger nitrous setup requires its own dedicated fuel system. Since we do not plan on hitting the stock engine with enough squeeze to make a loud ka-boom, we made sure our fuel system would be adequate. Also, a dedicated fuel system with a noisy electric pump may give the guy in the other lane an idea that something is up. Remember, we want to be sneaky about this.